


with whom you cannot reason

by Nabielka



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 15:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7850200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jokaste was in the kitchen when Vannes came in, her clothes sticking to her and a line of sweat at the top of her forehead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with whom you cannot reason

Jokaste was in the kitchen when Vannes came in, her clothes sticking to her and a line of sweat at the top of her forehead. 

The walk back, pleasant in the stillness of the mid-morning, had turned the exhaustion that had had her dropping against the changing room benches into a pleasanter tension of her muscles. Their coach, Halvik, who was demanding but not unkind, had been pleased - a rarity now that the new administration of the sport complex was denying their bookings.

Vannes too was pleased, to walk into the kitchen and find herself not alone. It was less pleasing to see that there was still a lot to be cleaned up after last night: a collection of dirty glasses pushed together on the far side of the table, some not quite drunk up, by them bottles and cans, enough to fill up a mini-bar, most with still some to drink. 

As the water boiled, she leaned back against the kitchen counter in wait. About to speak – for while they were not friends exactly, they were on terms enough for that – she found her gaze drawn instead. 

The top Jokaste wore was sleeveless in a submission to the weather. Her shoulders stood out, suddenly pleasantly wide, like those of someone Vannes could have seen at the gym and started to recognise. There were four little sunspots across the nearest shoulder, splayed just above a vaccination mark. 

Vannes had the sudden feeling that she could rest her fingers against them, or between them, and feel Jokaste’s skin, soft and warm, and hold her close. The realisation hit her like a cold sweat. 

When they had first met, Vannes had taken one look at Jokaste, noted with detachment that her face was agreeable and rather regular, and thought little more of her appearance. Her own tastes ran towards bulk and visible muscles, not this dainty prettiness, all smooth curves, that were all Jokaste could boast. 

But now, stripped of its usual frilly confines, was a set of very fine shoulders, and she found herself looking at Jokaste with new eyes. A swimmer’s body, perhaps, beneath all those ruffles and scarves removed by the coming of summer. 

She returned the milk someone had left out to spoil to the fridge, shutting it softly, then, noticing the freezer slightly ajar, tried to shut that too. It would not budge. She opened it to a build-up of frost and a curse.

“You need to defrost that,” said Jokaste coolly. She had a talent for giving even bland observations the tone of a command, which never failed to make Vannes bristle. She had an air of it too, her way of sitting suggested certain command, like Laurent’s did, except that Vannes knew him well enough to know that he was softer than he seemed.

“I know,” she said, and pushed it as far as it would go. “Some other time.”

Their gazes met, and held. 

She was closer than Vannes had realised. There was a little yellowish ring around her pupils, which put Vannes in mind of an amphibian. If she wore mascara at all, it was very faint. They were very nice eyes, blue-grey like a still lake on a cloudy day.

There was a series of knocks at the door. 

Jokaste blinked and the moment broke. After a short pause, she turned on her stool, slid off, and walked out. Vannes heard the door, then voices. She moved back. 

After a minute, Jokaste returned to the kitchen with an unknown man who had a big smile and even bigger biceps. Even Vannes, whose disinterest in men had no exceptions, had to admit to herself that he might be fun to watch wrestle. He looked capable. 

He looked like someone that might draw Laurent’s attention, and then his sharp tongue, were he there. And indeed, they had barely exchanged a few sentences, barely beyond an introduction, when the door opened again and Laurent came through. In a surrender to the weather, he left the top two buttons of his shirt undone, and his throat lay bare and exposed. 

His eyes flickered between the three of them. 

He put a cup down by the drying rack, tea leaves still floating in the liquid remnants. It hit the counter with a thud, dangerously close to the edge. In the kitchen light, his face looked even paler than usual. He had not moved his eyes, it barely seemed like he had blinked. 

She had the sudden sense that something was happening, though she knew not what. She stepped closer to him, moved the cup further up towards the toaster. 

Being closer, she could see that he was digging his little and ring fingers into his palm. 

His other hand jerked up as if to close up his shirt, but stopped halfway. 

Damen said, very softly, “Hello, Laurent.”

Something flickered in Laurent’s face. He did not reply. He acknowledged it only with a slight inclination of his head. 

It was followed by a side look to her, and a silent departure. 

Jokaste too was looking at Damen. “Well,” she said as the door swung closed; automatic, fire safety. She drew the syllable out. “Sorry about him. He doesn’t really do friends.”

“No,” said Damen, tearing his eyes away from the space where Laurent had been. “No. I –” he hesitated visibly. With one hand he was flipping over the wristbands on his other arms, over and over. They were bright colours: red, shades of orange, yellows, and a lonely light blue band that his hand did not touch. “We’ve met before, he’s not being unreasonable.” 

“Oh?” said Jokaste, with a tilt of the head. Her hair was a wave of curls. It swooped to the side, leaving one shoulder exposed. 

It was nice to look at. Jokaste had always been nice to look at, if only in the way one looked at a painted woman, of cream and honey beauty. Kissed, she might make a pretty sight, her hair slipping a little from its elaborate constraints, her lipstick a little less strong. 

But this, then, was not the time. Vannes fixed her gaze on Damen instead, harder, for signs of an answer.

The helplessness of the situation struck her. She could not stop him, though it would mortify Laurent, intensely private over things others paid no mind to, to have whatever could draw such a reaction out of him revealed. He had walls aplenty, could grow difficult to deal with in unexpected times, but for all that they got on well enough, and though she was curious, he did not deserve this. But though she was strong physically, still she could not leap at him to stop his words, and if she protested, he would only reveal all elsewhere, and without her there Jokaste would be crueller in response. 

She had seen Jokaste smile like that before. She would smile, she would stroke back her hair behind her ear, and it would not take long before she had convinced her interlocutor to reveal all. That smile meant danger, and in any case, Jokaste did not much care for Laurent.

Damen blinked, hard, then said, “It’s not really my story to tell.”

Jokaste washed her cup up very briskly. “It certainly seemed like it had something to do with you too,” she said. 

“Only a little,” said Damen. A beep of his phone had him dropping his hand from the bands. He looked down, gave a little nod as though whoever had sent the text could see, then tapped out a short reply and stood up. “We should go, or we’d leave him waiting.” 

Jokaste dried her hands with a dishcloth. It was bright orange, a colour she swore she never wore. Her fingernails were very even, neatly trimmed. Vannes remembered her laughing, a wave of her hand in an ill-remembered gesture and saying something about how it made her skin look. 

“All right,” she said. Her tone said: for now. She came over and reached forward for her keys, three keychains clinging. The pendant around her neck swung forward a little, her neckline dipped. A flash of skin and a brief sniff of perfume, and then she was away again. “I know what Kastor’s like,” she was saying with a laugh, Damen answering with something quiet she couldn’t make out, and the door swung shut behind them. 

The kitchen fell into silence, a little lonely.

The mess of cups was there. The dirt and dust was there, by the table legs and elsewhere in little clumps, as though someone had swept it up together in places and then given up. The glories of student life. It could be dealt with later. 

They might forget. If Damen held to his resistance, Jokaste might brush it off as one of those things people one did not know well did, acting outwith the blueprint one expected. Laurent had several of those. 

She thought of the expression on his face, something awful in it. There had been times she had seen him staring down at his phone, flipping it around in his hand, a move that looked careless until one looked closer and then the tension was writ large. 

With a sigh, she went to knock on his door. He might want to talk, might want to distract himself from whatever had lain there unspoken between him and their visitor, or even, it being more his story, divulge some. For there had been something in the look he had shot her, beyond perhaps an unspoken request for assistance in that moment, and she was always soft on sadness in people.

The door opened on the second knock. She drew a breath, and spoke.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song 'Hard to Get Gertie' by Esther Walker.


End file.
